Wanted: A confused pile of filth that sets action movies back twelve years. Of all the violence that occurs in the film, the most painful thing to watch is Angelina Jolie. A non-actor whose acting prowess is about as strong as her 80 pound scarecrow body, she fits perfectly into a movie like ‘Wanted’. For, this movie is not about acting, storytelling, or even attention gathering. It is a perfect “non-film”. It is the corn flakes in the meat loaf of summer movies-pure filler that is just there. The disgust that it displays for its viewers, (”I was once normal and pathetic like you” says a voice over to the audience) it shows for the medium of movie making. Muddled and without vision or creativity or even the effort to ‘phone it in’, this is a creative endeavor similar to a drunk 15 year-old spray painting “Megaballs” on a Burger King’s dumpster.
Indiana Jones and The George Lucas Shitball: I’ve seen Indiana Jones’ last installment twice now and I had really hoped that the second viewing would prove me wrong in my initial judgment that it was as exciting as a toupe colored insane asylum’s bathroom. Instead I found that whatever fun I had imaged in the first viewing was really just a reaction to eating my Peanut M&M’s too fast. Rule #1: George Lucas is about as cool as Condie Rice’s war planning parties, and Rule #2: Steven Spielberg should be freed from his “Best Friends Forever” pledge he made with Lucas at summer camp.
Iron Man and Hulk: Men and violence.
Speed Racer: Actually, probably for all its faults, might be the most fun I’ve had a movie this summer.
Note: ‘fun’ doesn’t mean necessarily ‘good’. I laughed, and the audience I saw it with was all into it, so it was fun.
A word about movie audiences: I don’t know what’s happened, but seeing a movie on an opening weekend has become the most traumatic thing I now do. People talking through the entirety of a movie, people screaming at each other, fights nearly breaking out, drunk homeless people talking loudly to the racist and classist delight (which is probably more appropriately self hating unease), people chewing gum loudly, etc.
The experience of being with an audience has proven much more frightful and engaging than the movies themselves. Is this a reaction to the tripe that’s being screened? Are people taking it upon themselves to create and feed of an inhumane and disjointed ’interaction’ with others for the catharsis and emotive stimulus that our modern art cannot provide?
A dark room filled with anonymous people and the ability to hold them as a captive audience brings out some interesting social situations.
Or…I must wonder how much is it a cultural expectation that a movie be watched for what it is? Maybe like a curator at a museum, I’m wanting to enforce an unnatural reaction to a work of art: “No! Don’t touch the statue!” “But it’s pretty to look at, and even better to touch!”
What is art anyway? What is the communal experience of art about? Are we being bound together, all of us, by the experience? Just as I want everything else in my life sanitized and solitary, maybe I’m just expecting that of my filmic viewing. Sheesh. Its getting harder and harder to watch and criticize movies.
